The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Read online

  “Why yes, Aunt. So I found—when I got his number in the book and tried to call him back.”

  “All right! Da’s all Ah wan’s to know! Yo’ Unc’ Silas he got mohgage on dat jedge’s house.”

  “But, Aunt, how—how can you know all this—about Uncle Silas’ affairs?”

  “How? Lan’ sake, Chil’. Ain’ Ah tell you once already how Ah clean up ‘roun’ yo’ Uncle’s flat off an’ on—an’ wash fo’ dat lazy Bella now an’ ag’in, at dat 8-room house ob huh’s? An’ on’y a few weeks ago w’en Ah wuz dah—yes, at Bella’s—an’ yo’ Uncle wuz stayin’ wid ’em fo’ a few nights, kaze de dec’rators hah made his flo’s all sticky wid vahnish—he an’ Manny wuz in Manny’s libery—talkin’ ’bout de mohgages—all of w’ich dey’s brung home from Manny’s safe downtown—an’ whut dey’s got all laid out for’ discussionin’—an’ I heah ’em discussin’ one on a Jedge Hillbilly’ Somebody’s house. An’ sayin’ he cain’t renew it—and dey don’ lak fo’closin’ neider, cause mebbe de big Prairie Abenoo Improbement don’t nebber come thu! An’—well, Chile, hit’s all clah to me. Yo’ Unc’ somehow fin’ out ’bout dis heah law case—an’ sic dat jedge on you to he’p him steal yo’ fathah’s land.”

  Elsa was staggered now. “Well, Aunt’Linda, I’m dead sure there’s no collusion—at least so far as stealing my land is concerned. For Judge Penworth has a reputation for being straight. But as to the mortgage—and his appointing me—yes—there could be an agreement—yet I couldn’t dare claim collusion—just because the Judge has appointed me.”

  “Hahdly,” said Aunt Linda sardonically. “You can’t claim nuffin’—wid dis disbahment o’der skimmin’ along to reach you in anotha’ houah o’ so. Hahdly!”

  Aunt Linda now asked another question. “But dis heah man whut is to git tried? Whut de case ag’in him? He drunk o’ disohdaly—o’ what?”

  Elsa shook her head. “The case against him is bad, Aunt. Burglary! And murder! Not one—but two charges. I ran out and got a Despatch the minute the Judge hung up on me—and got the details of the man’s crime. Or rather,” Elsa corrected herself punctiliously, “his alleged crime! But since the story was written by a man I personally happen to know is brother to the State’s Attorney himself, one can only assume, Aunt, that its facts are—are 24-karat, when it comes to being facts. But the point is, anyway, that the man was caught dead to rights with the stolen goods in his possession.”

  “Well, dat don’ mean numen’ def’nit’, Chil’. An’ Ah don’ see w’y you mek sich final comclusions ’bout it—at leas’ at dis p’int. Fo’ dey is a t’ousum reasons why men som’times happens to hab on deysevves stolened goods. And it don’, in itself, mean nuffin’.”

  “Sometimes not, maybe,” Elsa admitted ruefully, “but here quite the opposite. For this man, Aunt, admitted, in front of two highly reputable witnesses, that he did have the goods in question—and that he’d cracked the State’s Attorney’s safe, moreover, to get them!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  There Were 15 at Table!

  Louis Vann, State’s Attorney of Cook County, Illinois, seated at his great handcarved mahogany desk in the private office of his official suite in the City Hall, his feet firmly imbedded in the thick green velvet carpet beneath his swivel chair, studied intent1y the foolscap sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of him. The paper being no less than his hastily hand-written roster of State’s witnesses for the forthcoming trial tonight, of one John Doe, identity unknown. Both the paper, and Vann’s thin, keen—and, it is to be admitted, boyish—face were lighted up by the flood of light from the huge windows fronting his big desk—windows which, oddly enough, looked unseeingly out across the busy street towards the ancient building containing Vann’s old office where he had begun practice—and which today, as State’s Attorney, he still retained, out of sentiment—and which had been, moreover, the night just gone, the scene of robbery—and murder!

  But his study of the names of those witnesses who would, he felt, make the State’s case tonight a two-hour affair at most, was interrupted by the entrance into his private sanctum of Miss Jason, the thin-necked and very elderly female who saw to it rigorously that no one was allowed to disturb the State’s Attorney unless he himself first passed upon that matter.

  “Mr. Vann—” she began.

  “Yes?” And he looked up impatiently from his roster of witnesses.

  “Special Investigator August Bardell—of your staff—wishes to see you.”

  “Who? Oh—Bardell? Oh, I’m awfully busy, Miss Jason. Tell him to come by tomorrow, will you?”

  “But he wants only, Mr. Vann, 3 minutes.”

  “But—”

  “And he says it is rather important.”

  “Yes, but I can’t aff—only 3 minutes, eh?—well tell him if he’ll say what he has to say in 2—he can come in!”

  Miss Jason essayed one of those smileless smiles for which she was noted in the City Hall. And melted noiselessly out of the picture.

  Evidently Investigator Bardell—one-time plainclothesman on the Detective Bureau—but now transferred to Vann’s own State-paid staff—was willing to say what he had to say in 2 minutes. For he entered a moment later, a stocky individual in a brown suit, with the thick-soled shoes of the true detective, and wearing a voluminous black Windsor tie indicating some sort of weird disguise.

  “For—for God’s sake, Bardell!” ejaculated Vann. “Since when?” And he made a gesture to his own law-abiding and conservative tie.

  Bardell flushed a brick-red.

  “That’s—that’s what I wanted to see you about.”

  “That tie? Then for Heaven’s sake keep it till tomorrow, and—”

  “But wait, Mr. Vann—it’s not so much the tie, as the matter of how I wore it—and the place. You know?”

  “Oh—the meeting of those bloody fire-eaters? I ought to have guessed!” Vann paused expectantly. “Well—whom did they plot to blow up?”

  Bardell, now standing at Vann’s desk, made answer.

  “Nobody, Mr. Vann. ’Twas a regular legitimate party, from A to Izzard, that meeting off Bughouse Square. All men—no wimmen!—but strict—well—fun.” And Bardell made a grimace as indicating that fun was a thing of many definitions.

  “Fun? Well, that’s odd, to say the least. Considering that Hugo Schletmar, who’s practically known to have been mixed up in bombings in 4 different cities, was to be there. And Andrew Brosnatch, who served time on Alcatraz for assassinating Millionaire Lovewell of San Francisco—the same. Are you dead sure nothing was slipped over on you?”

  “Listen, Mr. Vann, I tell you that even anarchists have to unlax now and then. Koncil and I were present in that big studio room o’ young van der Zook’s, from 7:40 in the evening, right after the first of the invited guests had arrived—till 5 this morning, when the affair broke up, and the last guest—inc’dentally he was the first one, too!—including us—departed. And there wasn’t a word of anarchistic talk. No blowing up of anybody. No—no bumping off the President. Or sowing a pineapple in the First National Bank. Nothing but drink red wine—knock editors—and—”

  “Knock editors?”

  “Yeah, Editors, Mr. Vann. For there were literary lights amongst ’em. A regular Bohemian bunch—no fooling. And a spaghetti dinner served at—what time was it, now?—yes—10 p.m. sharp. With everybody putting on colored tissue-paper hats—pulling snapperjacks—and drinking red wine.”

  “My God! Schletmar and Brosnatch—putting on tissue paper hats! For of course they were there. Otherwise—”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Vann, sure they were there. Otherwise I’d have reported right off the bat that the cover was a fizzle.”

  “Well—that’s that, I guess. From the source and nature of the tip I had, I did think that Schletmar and Brosnatch must be up to something. And which of course is why I wangled invites for you and Koncil out
of that very source. As ex-movie actor—and big game hunter—respectively.” Vann gazed down at Bardell’s thick-soled shoes.

  “I hope you didn’t wear those shoes?”

  “God no, Mr. Vann! I wore my—my freak shoes. And I haven’t adjusted Kleig lights in the studios there in Hollywood for two long years without being able to spout the studio lingo. Nor was Koncil found wanting, either, in view of his having gone, with President Kattins, of the Second National Bank, to Africa.”

  “I don’t suppose,” asked Vann ironically, “that the host’s father, Buford van der Zook Senior, was amongst that bunch?”

  “I’ll say no! From conversation around the table I gathered he was a real artist—and makes real money. While van der Zook the younger is a—a futurist. His canvases, so I thought, were awful! And they explained why he lives in a garret room off Bughouse Square, with not even a telephone, and has to serve spaghetti and red wine at a party, instead of capons and champagne, as his old man is said to do.”

  “But which verdict as to van der Zook Junior’s canvases,” Vann commented, “you no doubt kept to yourself? As did the rest! Well, was there anybody there at all suspicious acting, or looking?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Vann—but positively not. In the way, that is, that you mean. A bunch of Bohemians—if ever there were any—and I don’t believe anybody there knew that Schletmar and Brosnatch were the dangerous birds they really are. Fact is, I don’t think anybody there had the least idea that Brosnatch had served time on Alcatraz.”

  “But, suspicious or not, I presume you made a mental listing of the guests?”

  “A mental listing? Why, say, Mr. Vann, I got a written listing—with them signing their own signatures to it.”

  “Oh come, come, Bardell—you didn’t arouse Schletmar’s suspicions—nor Brosnatch’s—by asking either of them to sign anything?”

  “Why, I didn’t have to, Mr. Vann, for when the first feed was over—you see there were two feeds during the night, the first being regular, and served around a big table—the later one being buffet—and God, but the wine was rank at that second one!—but anyway, as I started to say, there was an early main feed put on to—to sort of oil up the hungry geniuses, I guess!—and when that feed was over, which was at 10:40, everybody signed everybody else’s paper napkin—clear around the table. And with addresses, to boot—in case anybody wanted to get in touch later with anybody else.”

  And Bardell, fishing in his breast pocket, brought up a rectangularly folded paper napkin, which, as he unfolded it, showed that it contained a list of signatures in ink, or in pencil, and, in one place, red crayon—bold and flourishing, all of them, as done by such as had drunk red wine—and deeply!

  “Well, I’ll certainly say,” Vann commented, “that you brought home the roster! And—how!” He took the napkin, and laid it on his desk, signatures uppermost. “And who’ve we got here? Oh—Harman Ochs, the cubistic sculptor? That fellow has something new—but the world will never admit it. And—well, well, well, here’s Schletmar himself—and I note he even sets down the address on Portage Park where he’s rooming. That shows conclusively, Bardell, that you and Koncil got across okay. And who else have we? Lon Annyman. Now where on earth have I hear—”

  “Oh,” put in Bardell helpfully, “he’s—”

  “Right!” said Vann, the answer coming suddenly to him. “The inside-page cartoonist who got bounced off the Tribune because he was found inserting hidden caricatures of well-known Chicagoans in his backgrounds.

  Damn fool! He should have—but let’s see who else we have? Jerry Ames. Good American name. And—but who—who on earth—is this?”

  And Vann pointed to a very eccentric signature, made in green ink, with tiny triangles used for dots over the ‘i’s and two capital ‘V’s interlaced, to constitute a capital ‘W.’

  It read, Piffington Wainwright, N. W. Corner Superior Street and North State Street.

  Bardell gazed over Vann’s shoulder, the better to see which signature the State’s Attorney was pointing to.

  “Oh—that?” he said. “That’s the bird I spoke of who was first to arrive—since he came before even Koncil and myself—and last to go. For he went with us. In Koncil’s car, south. And we dropped him off near Water Tower Square. A weird-looking bird all right. Wore rouge on his cheeks, and—”

  “Fairy, eh?” nodded Vann. And then added dryly:

  “You ought to officially mail me in his name for that police roster of Chicago pansies, and earn your $10 out of that fund put up by—well, I’m not allowed to give the donor’s name, but—”

  “Yes, Mr. Vann, I know all about that. But such names have to be confirmed as such. And this name, I’d say, can’t be. For, rouge or no rouge, the fellow is no nancy. I know, because he sat next to me all during the dinner. And I had plenty chances to chin personally with him. He told me all about his going to get married shortly to some girl who works in some coal office, and you know yourself that no fair—”

  “Yes, but—but the rouge?”

  “I know. Well, a couple of the guests there twitted him about that. He just laughed, and said that if he didn’t like his own white skin, it was his own goddamned business—those were his words!—if he wanted to color his skin up a bit. And that if he didn’t own his own carcass, to do with as he pleased, he might as well jump in the lake right now.”

  “I see. Well, if he really has marriage in view, and didn’t make even a pass at you, then he probably has nothing against his manliness than perhaps a mother who didn’t let him play with the other bad boys.” Vann looked down at the napkin. “But this—this N. W. Corner of Superior and State Streets? What—”

  “Oh, he says he lives on a vacant lot there, back of some billboards, in an abandoned trailer. Some property tangle—where he gets the use of the site—for making occupancy.”

  “Oh yes—that William Juggenberry Junior Estate, I’ll wager. Which had some provisions like that tied up in it. For—but what does this Wainwright fellow do?”

  “We-ell—he does imitations—he did a number of ’em while we were eating. And he’s not bad, either. Can change his voice like nobody’s business, and can—but to give you an idea, Mr. Vann, he put on one of Einstein, figuring out a new relativ—hrmph—theory—and one of Mae West.”

  “Then of course he’s an actor. So—”

  “No, he isn’t. For I asked him exactly that. The imitations-giving is just his av—avocation. Actually, he’s some kind of a writer.” Bardell frowned. “What kind, I wasn’t able to get. But I knew he was, because of his stance against editors. They were half-wits, all of them. The radio editors included! Besides,” added Bardell, “he had green ink stains on his right fingertip.”

  “Just an eccentric Bohemian creative artist then,” sighed Vann. And ran his eyes speculatively down the rest of the names. Finding nothing more of interest. “Well,” he said,.

  “I’ll keep this signed-up napkin—in the file on Schletmar. And with a cross entry for Brosnatch.”

  “You won’t need to do that,” said Bardell mildly. “For Koncil also has one of these napkins—and will be barging in with it any time—after which you’ll have two!”

  “Okay, Bardell. Well, I guess you can go.”

  “Thanks—and I will. For I want to catch some more sleep. That party—all night, you know? And then going out tonight at 7 on the Merkise Case.”

  “Beat it then—and hit the hay. And I’ll arrange for Miss Jason to head off Koncil and his napkin! And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Mr. Vann.” And Bardell, with a bow to his superior, retired. Letting himself out of the private office.

  Vann rang hastily for Miss Jason. Who entered precisely on the very departing heels of Bardell.

  “Miss Jason,” Vann directed her, “place this napkin here in the file on Hugo Schletmar.” And he held it forth to her.

 
She gazed at it, astonished.

  “A—a napkin, Mr. Vann? Well, surely—but—but do you mind telling me why—”

  Her eyes, however, were now resting on the names.

  And she changed her interrogative. “That is, what it contains?”

  He looked up at her curiously.

  “No, not at all. It contains, in their own handwritings—and with their own private addresses—the names of 11 possible anarchistic connections of Hugo Schletmar and Andrew Brosnatch—if or ever the Post Office gets bombed! Or the Federal Attorney-General gets assassinated. Or anything like that. All the said names having been obtained last night be­tween the witching hour of 10 p.m. and the equally witching hour of 11 p.m.—at, to be precise, Miss Jason, 10:40 p.m.!—whilst the owners of the names were stoking the fires of mortal man with red wine and spaghetti. The dinner being the highspot of a party which ran—with all in attendance at it—from about 7:30 in the evening till 5 this morning. And the said names being, moreover, obtained in duplicate since Koncil will be barging in here later on with another such napkin. And which you can put in Brosnatch’s file.”

  She had taken it gingerly, and was apparently riveting her eyes on one signature in particular.